LCR 69 Sanatura Escazu 95

Liceo de Costa Rica, one of the league's traditional powers, has decided to play this year's tournament with its Juegos Nacionales team, players that are all younger than 21 years old. Escazu tried the same road last year. So right from the outset they have a talent gap when facing other teams in this league. I've long thought that one of the most dangerous thing in sports is to face a team that has nothing to lose.

So Friday night, coming off a big road win in San Ramon, we were facing this young Liceo team. The game was much tighter that I would have liked. While we had no problems scoring points from all over the court, our defense was very sloppy, allowing too many open looks for my liking. The first quarter ended with a four point margin, while the halftime lead expanded to six points. We turned up the defensive intensity in the third quarter which finally allowed us to break out to a twenty point lead that gave us a choke-hold on the game.

The large lead let us experiment with different lineups and defenses; some of our defensive calls still need work, but at this stage of the season that is expected.

Game Notes

• Reiner Little led our scoring with twenty points, while Jeff Dixon was the leading rebounder with 8.
• David Gourzong continued his strong play from Tuesday. He had a strong preseason last year before getting hurt in the season opener, an injury that affected his playing time and got lost in the shuffle. David has as much physical talent as anyone on our roster; if he can stay healthy he should have a big year for us.
• One of the changes from last year is the Sub 21 minutes. We are now forced to play our Sub 21 guys ten minutes per game, but it's a season total rather than a per game requirement like we had last year. Also, we now have to play sub 21 players 4 minutes per game in the psotseason. Our team has a very good set of sub 21 players (Armando Duran, Ronny Johnson, Jose Garcia, Adrain Echeverria and Ian Waugh to name a few), a result of Escazu's strong youth leagues, so I'm not too concerned about our ability to comply with the rule. I really hate the rule because it's such an artificial intrusion into the game and has all sorts of site effects that the Federation doesn't understand.
• Speaking of the Federation, our commissioner has decided that the Limon game cancellation was due to an issue outside their control (the gym was not available), and not to their faulty organization. Thus the game is being rescheduled for a later date. Such is life in Costa Rica, where lack of organization is not only tolerated but rewarded. This is exactly why we have such a mediocre league.